Barack Backhands Bibi

Did the community organizer from Harvard Law just deliver some personal payback to the IDF commando? So it would seem.

By abstaining on that Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal and invalid, raged Bibi Netanyahu, President Obama “failed to protect Israel in this gang-up at the UN, and colluded with it.”

Obama’s people, charged Bibi, “initiated this resolution, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed.”

White House aide Ben Rhodes calls the charges “falsehoods.”

Hence, we have an Israeli leader all but castigating an American president as a backstabber and betrayer, while the White House calls Bibi a liar.

This is not an unserious matter.

“By standing with the sworn enemies of Israel to enable the passage of this destructive, one-sided anti-Israel rant and tirade,” writes the Washington Times, “Mr. Obama shows his colors.”

But unfortunately for Israel, the blow was delivered by friends as well as “sworn enemies.”

The U.S. abstained, but Britain, whose Balfour Declaration of 1917 led to the Jewish state in Palestine, voted for the resolution.

As did France, which allied with Israel in the Sinai-Suez campaign of 1956 to oust Egypt’s Colonel Nasser, and whose Mysteres were indispensable to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Vladimir Putin, who has worked with Bibi and was rewarded with Israel’s refusal to support sanctions on Russia for Crimea and Ukraine, also voted for the resolution.

Egypt, whose Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was welcomed by Bibi after his coup against the Muslim Brotherhood president, and who has collaborated with Bibi against terrorists in Sinai and Gaza, also voted yes.

China voted yes, as did Ukraine. New Zealand and Senegal, both of which have embassies in Tel Aviv, introduced the resolution.

Despite Israel’s confidential but deepening ties with Sunni Arab states that share her fear and loathing of Iran, not a single Security Council member stood by her and voted against condemning Israel’s presence in Arab East Jerusalem and the Old City. Had the resolution gone before the General Assembly, support would have been close to unanimous.

While this changes exactly nothing on the ground in the West Bank or East Jerusalem where 600,000 Israelis now reside, it will have consequences, and few of them will be positive for Israel.

The resolution will stimulate and strengthen the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, which has broad support among U.S. college students, Bernie Sanders Democrats, and the international left.

If Israel does not cease expanding West Bank settlements, she could be hauled before the International Criminal Court and charged with war crimes.

Already, J Street, the liberal Jewish lobby that backs a two-state solution in Palestine—and has been denounced by Donald Trump’s new envoy to Israel David Friedman as “far worse than kapos,” the Jewish guards at Nazi concentration camps—has endorsed the resolution.

The successful resolution is also a reflection of eroding support for Israel at the top of the Democratic Party, as a two-term president and a presidential nominee, Secretary of State John Kerry, were both behind it.

Republicans are moving to exploit the opening by denouncing the resolution and the UN and showing solidarity with Israel. Goal: replace the Democratic Party as the most reliable ally of Israel, and reap the rewards of an historic transfer of Jewish political allegiance.

That Sen. George McGovern was seen as pro-Palestinian enabled Richard Nixon to double his Jewish support between 1968 and 1972.

That Jimmy Carter was seen as cold to Israel enabled Ronald Reagan to capture more than a third of the Jewish vote in 1980, on his way to a 44-state landslide.

Moreover, U.S. acquiescence in this resolution puts Bibi in a box at home. Though seen here as a hawk on the settlements issue, the right wing of Bibi’s coalition is far more hawkish, pushing for outright annexation of West Bank settlements. Others call for a repudiation of Oslo and the idea of an independent Palestinian state.

If Bibi halts settlement building on the West Bank, he could cause a split in his cabinet with rightist rivals like Naftali Bennett who seek to replace him.

Here in the U.S., the UN resolution is seen by Democrats as a political debacle, and by many Trump Republicans as an opportunity.

Sen. Chuck Schumer has denounced Obama’s refusal to veto the resolution, echoing sentiments about the world body one used to hear on America’s far right.

“The U.N.,” said Schumer, “has been a fervently anti-Israel body since the days [it said] ‘Zionism is racism’ and that fervor has never diminished.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says he will urge Congress to slash funding for the United Nations.

If the folks over at the John Birch Society still have some of those bumper stickers—“Get the U.S. out of the U.N., and the U.N. out of the U.S.!”—they might FedEx a batch over to Schumer and Graham.

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36 Responses to Barack Backhands Bibi

Already, J Street, the liberal Jewish lobby that backs a two-state solution in Palestine—and has been denounced by Donald Trump’s new envoy to Israel David Friedman as “far worse than kapos,” the Jewish guards at Nazi concentration camps—has endorsed the resolution.

Our UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, who has remarked that her children trace their lineage through their father to the renowned Medieval Jewish sage, the Gaon of Vilna, favored the resolution, by abstaining.

This resolution has forced quarterback Trump out of the pocket and shown what his real game plan will be. Continual and unequivocal support for Israel. This strong support makes sense when Israel is in the right, not, however, when they are usurping other people’s property as a result of a war they started. Trump won for many reasons, one being, a less aggressive and more even handed foreign policy that does offer up the youth of this country as sacrifice in endless and often irrational wars. An uneven Israel right or wrong policy will ensure continuing conflict and a discounting of the US as an even handed peace broker. I now feel he duped many voters. He is no Ron Paul and he did not win in a Ronald Reagan landslide. . .

Schumer’s lying again. Every US government from Reagan to Obama has condemned the settlements. Our allies condemn the settlements. The Israeli opposition condemns the settlements. Here’s hoping Netanyahu’s corrupt gang are replaced by the kind of Israeli government one can respect and support.

It sure was a pragmatic move for Trump, after all the accusations of antisemitism leveled. It does make for a kind of political invulnerability, as did the nuke-building declaration after which instead of being Putin’s stooge, he was going to launch WWIII with him. Whereupon he defused that too, by releasing the Putin letter that hoped for peaceful reconciliation with America. Which also defuses both those conspiracy accusations.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016) – the resolution on which the US just abstained – “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace…”

I’ve been a Trump supporter from the beginning – and I will remain a supporter of President Trump. But like the rest of the world outside of the Zionist circles of the US and Israel I support Resolution 2334 in its entirety, paragraph-by-paragraph, word-by-word, all 13 points of it.

Abstaining was wrong. The US should have voted “yes.”

Whether there is an eventual 2-state solution, or a South-Africa style (unitary state, one-person-one-vote) solution, the enduring truths embodied in Resolution 2334 will drive the eventual outcome.

When will Israel define its border? Is it Genesis 15:18 from the river in Egypt to the Euphrates river in Iraq? Didn’t God make His covenant conditional on the obedience of Abraham’s offspring? Deuteronomy 28. Does the modern, secular state called Israel have a living prophet telling the Jews to take the land away from the people living there? The 10 tribes of the Kingdom of Israel were conquered and assimilated in 722 BC leaving the southern Kingdom of Judah (and the tribe of Benjamin). They were conquered in 586 BC. Later Judeans (Jews) returned to Judea. The land today should rightfully be called Judea, not Israel, and of course Jews should be allowed to live there. But I disagree that it should be a solely Jewish state. Also, I do not believe that the modern, secular state called Israel has anything to do with the Second Coming of Christ. Modern Israel is not the Israel of the Bible.

This article seems odd. Am I missing something, or has Pat changed his views on Israel? I thought Buchanan believed (rightly) that Palestine is being occupied by Israel. I don’t see anything wrong with the UN resolution. Why is Pat against it? Has he taken the NeoCon position on Israel?

It’s way passed time this resoultion was passed. To much of what’s happening in the Middle East has roots in the US “kid glove” and “turning a blind eye” to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian. Next step should be dealing with America’s “two-faced” client-state Saudia Arabia.

Remember the USS Liberty? Allies don’t attempt to sink another Allies ships and indiscriminately kill it’s Sailors.
President Obama reminded Netyahoo of that last year when Netyahoo was trying to start a war with Iran.
The country of Israel would not exist if not for the UN. I Think Netyahoo forgot that part of Israels history.

Wow! There is a lot of ignorance on this message board! Why do people ignore history? Weather you like Netanyahu or not, THERE IS NO PALESTINE. Why is the world trying to force an invention of Israels enemies into existence? Doesn’t anyone cars about facts anymore?

Tim Mattson, whether or not there historically has been a separate Palestinian state in history has exactly zero relevance in this discussion. The fact remains that there are residents in the land now occupied by Israel who are not Jews, and they have essentially no citizenship rights. Whether they receive rights as Arab Israeli citizens (like Arabs in Israel proper) or they are given a separate state, they don’t have either now. Is the current situation either just or sustainable? THAT is the issue.

“After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War the Eastern portion of Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan. Under Jordanian control Jews were completely expelled from the Old City including the Jewish quarter, and Jews were barred from entering the Old City for 19 years, effectively banning Jewish prayer at the site of the Western Wall. This period ended on June 10, 1967, when Israel gained control of the site following the Six-Day War.” From Wikipedia.

The resolution includes not only the settlements but also Jerusalem. What will happen to the holiest Jewish site you can see from the excerpt from Wikipedia above.

Evidently Mr. Mattson believes in politics of fait accompli and brute force.
In 1947 THERE WAS NO ISRAEL.
Relations not based on organic development and morality
(dual morality, where rules of conduct are predicated on belonging to chosen people, elected ones,
los perfectos, etc. excluded) inexorably lead to persecution, murder, war. Among other things, Christians of the ME, on the verge of destruction now, are the victims of establishment of Israel. Preferential treatment of Israel, even at the cost of wiping out the ME Christians is an integral part of the emergence of post-Christian America.

I am reminded that not only has it been official US policy since ’67 to call the occupied West Bank “Occupied Territories” (regardless of Christie’s begging forgiveness from Sheldon Adelson for accidentally using the correct term) but GW Bush went so far as to demand that Sharon actively tear down and displace Israeli occupiers in certain parts of the West Bank, which Sharon did. GW Bush was beloved by Likud.

Yet, the US merely abstains from voting on a UN statement which affirms America’s long standing policy, and is excoriated by Netanyahu. The same Netanyahu who attempted to interfere with Obama’s second run for the presidency and has regulary shown open disrespect to this President of the United States because Obama made it clear that US policy in the Middle East was made for Americans, not Israelis.

Let’s see how able to put “America First!” President Trump is vis a vis Israel.

There is and there has always been a land called Palestine. Israel was created by Imperialist and colonialist powers and without support from the said powers it probably would cease to exist.
Apparently you have no idea that most of the Zionists came from Europe and that these Europeans had no ethnic,cultural or historic ties to the land of Palestine.
Israel is the last bastion of white European racism and colonialism and just like former apartheid South Africa is doomed.

The Arabs have had every chance in the world for 80 years to negotiate for an independent Palestine. But that isn’t their goal – their goal is to murder Jews. This resolution is a lie from start to finish.

Tim Mattson get you a map of the Middle East prior to 1948. Now tell me what the area that is now Israel called? I believe you’ll see the name Palestine. And after 1948 how much of that area was given to Israel compared to what Israel illegally controls nowadays? If anybody is showing their ignorance arround here it’s you. But then again I’m assuming you’re a Christian Zionist who believes anything AIPAC and their church tells them.

“Weather you like Netanyahu or not, THERE IS NO PALESTINE. Why is the world trying to force an invention of Israels enemies into existence?”

I am a big fan of Israel – frankly I have a lot of respect for any country of 5-6 million that can beat the stuffing out of 250-300 million Muslims every generation or so. That said, the settlements are a cancer that will destroy Israel in the long run. If the Arabs living in the territories are absorbed into Israel, Israel is finished as a Jewish state and therefore as a state. Alternatively, the Arabs in the territories have to be kept bottled up without a country of their own, and that opens Israel to charges of being an apartheid state.

Sometimes people have to step in and stop their friends from doing self-destructive things. For the sake of Israel’s future, it is time for the US to crack down on settlements, bring about a two-state solution, and neuter the neoconservative lobby in Washington. That may not ensure peace in the Middle East but the current trajectory ensures there will war in the Middle East for many more generations.

Just like there is no Palestine, there is no Israel, there is no Saudi Arabia, there is no Jordan, there is no Lebanon, there is no Syria, etc. All of these countries were lines drawn on a map sometime after 1918. It was all Ottoman, and then it wasn’t.

So the indigenous Arab Muslim populations in the rest of the peninsula all eventually got governments representing them (….more or less…), except for those living in Mandatory Palestine.

The proclamation of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel precluded the right to self-determination of the existing population in Palestine (our name, which they have adopted). The fact that they are likely, as a whole, doing better than they would have without the creation of Israel is immaterial. It is not our (Westerners’) right to ‘civilize’ ‘savages.’

The U.S. is ‘lucky’ that we have so thoroughly subjugated our territory’s indigenous population that we are unlikely to ever be called to task for it (that and, we’re a permanent security council member). As for time bounding the concept of ‘occupying native lands’, one would place it around the period of the Enlightenment (early-mid 1700s). Territory taken from someone after that time, without an honorably negotiated treaty, should be considered unlawful.

“For the sake of Israel’s future, it is time for the US to crack down on settlements, bring about a two-state solution, and neuter the neoconservative lobby in Washington.

By all means neuter the Lobby, but it isn’t time for the US to crack down on settlements or “bring about” a two-state solution. It’s time for the US to cut Israel loose and force it to make its way in the world, as an adult does, by making its own arrangements and arriving in its own time and way at a modus vivendi with its neighbors (and enemies).

We have NO role to play in that, beyond ejecting the overgrown adolescent from our basement. We have our own very pressing problems to address, and all Israel does is substantially add to them.

I do not understand why Israel’s supporters do not really care about the country. It is a country being sunk by its own lousy leadership-with more poverty than Mexico! Do not forget all those protests by middle class-actually working class Israelis- since do not have much of a middle class according to research!

By the way, Singapore topped PISA and TIMSS in 2015 in EVERY SUBJECT and EVERY GRADE LEVEL and it is younger nation than Israel and had to really build its people up.
So much aid and such bad governance! Seems like the intelligent Jews are not in Israel!

I don’t see any geopolitical benefit to supporting the Palestinian cause. Let the Left own it.

Further, the liberal Jews who hate Israel and like to meet with Hezbollah leaders to discuss the global war against “hatred” will deserve what they get when the Left turns on them, especially if they want to sacrifice Israel on the altar of political correctness.

You have one territory and two peoples, and that can only end with the stronger people taking the territory. No one is going to post their mortal enemy in their backyard, certainly not to make the International bleeding heart squad happy.

It is hard to see how the Jews can survive as a despised minority without a homeland. It is hard to see the (real) Jews not fighting to preserve their homeland.

What is interesting is going forward, Israel will have to play less nice, and who will Israeli and pro-Israeli Jews be forced to ally with internationally?

Well, Trump did manage to command the loyalty of both Sheldon Adelson and David Duke–a state of affairs that can’t last too long after he takes office and has to commit to policy choices rather than giving speeches bound to please whichever house he is playing in.

My bet is that it is Duke and the alt-right who are disappointed, at least on the Israeli question. As Trump recently pointed out, the election is over, and he no longer needs voters. But money is always welcome.

What if the benefit was domestic? If the committed Zionists realize that their only unequivocal backers are strident nationalists, like Trump and Le Pen, then I think it will help to legitimate nationalist populist movements in the West.